Arcadia Awakens (44 page)

The tangled jungle that the tiny garden of the house had become in recent decades offered adequate cover. Remeo had been right. The back door was unlocked, and she probably had him to thank for that, too. Very close, beyond the bushes, a generator was chugging noisily. It smelled of burnt fuel and oil.

On tiptoe, she slipped into the house and made her way along a narrow corridor. A staircase led to the floor above. The banisters had disappeared.

Light fell through an open door near the entrance. Glasses or bottles clinked inside the room. A man’s voice was hoarsely singing along with an old Italian hit on a radio.

Revolver in hand, Rosa stole up the stairs. The steps under her feet seemed to be smeared with sticky resin that clung to the soles of her shoes. It felt like an eternity before she reached the top.

The singing stopped short.

Rosa scuttled around a corner at the top of the stairs. She heard loud footsteps in the kitchen, then in the corridor.

She held her breath. Listened and waited.

Nothing moved down below. Until she began to think no one was there now. But then she heard a cough, and footsteps walking back into the room. The radio was turned down, and the man did not begin his tuneless singing again.

A naked lightbulb lit the second-floor hallway. Four of the five doors were open. Only the last, at the very end, was closed. Someone had used a chunk of wood to make a bolt with a medieval look to it. It rested in fittings that had been screwed to the door itself and the wall beside the frame. Scraps of brownish wallpaper hung from the ceiling like dusty cobwebs. They blew eerily in the draft as Rosa passed under them.

As soon as she raised the cell phone to her ear, she could hear Pantaleone’s voice.

“I’m in the house,” she whispered. “Just outside Alessandro’s door.”

She distrusted her own feelings; she was torn between the confusing closeness she had felt when Alessandro, in his panther form, sat beside her at the end of the abandoned expressway, and her anger with him for leaving her behind at the palazzo like some silly little girl he’d picked up in a bar.

Soundlessly, she reached the end of the hall. The wooden bolt was heavy, and she had to put the revolver and cell phone down on the floor to lift it out of the fittings with both hands. The scraping of wood against wood sounded much too loud in the silence.

Very, very cautiously she propped the bolt against the wall. Picked up the revolver, but left the cell phone lying there. Placed one hand on the old-fashioned doorknob.

“Alessandro,” she whispered as she turned it. “It’s me. Rosa.”

There were footsteps on the stairs behind her.

Then quiet singing…

S
HE LET GO OF
the doorknob again and swung around, arms outstretched, holding the revolver in both hands. She aimed it down the hall as if she knew what she was doing. In fact she was trembling rather than taking aim.

A man came up the stairs. He reached the upper landing, carrying a steaming glass of hot milk. In his efforts not to spill the liquid, he still hadn’t noticed her. He switched the glass from hand to hand so he wouldn’t burn his fingers.

He was still fifteen feet away from Rosa when he looked up.

The glass fell and broke on the floor. Milk splashed over the dirty linoleum.

“One squeak out of you and I fire.” She hoped he didn’t notice how the revolver shook in her hands.

The man came closer.

“Stay where you are!”

This time he obeyed.

“Do you have a gun on you?”

Slowly, he opened his jacket with one hand and showed her the shoulder holster.

“Pull up the zipper on your jacket.” She dared not tell him to take the pistol out and drop it on the floor. She didn’t know how quick he might be. “Very carefully,” she said.

He was a head and a half taller than Rosa, and twice as broad. “You’re the Alcantara girl.”

“Zip up that jacket.”

“Okay.” He followed her instructions without trying any tricks. His face was not unattractive, almost humorous.

Finally he began moving again, arms raised by his sides.

“Stay where you are.”

“And then what?”

Good question. The hall was too narrow for her to make him pass her and go ahead into the room. And she couldn’t lock him in one of the other rooms either, because he would alert the guards outside through the window.

“You know,” he said quietly, taking another step toward her, “there’s only one thing for you to do. You’ll have to shoot me.”

She aimed the gun at his face.

“Can you do it?” he asked.

“I’ll shoot you in the stomach. If you don’t bleed to death, the pain will kill you.” She’d once heard that in a Western.

“Then you’d better
aim
at my stomach.” He dropped his left hand and patted his jacket. Her eyes instinctively followed his movement. In the same split second, she realized that she had made a mistake.

His right hand went swiftly behind his back, to bring out a long hunting knife. He must have been carrying it behind him on his belt.

Without a word, he lunged at her.

She pulled the trigger. The silencer swallowed up the sound except for a high whistling.

The man staggered as if he had been punched, stumbled back against the corridor wall. Something wet gleamed on his left shoulder as he turned to her again, his face distorted by pain.

Her hands were trembling more than ever. There was nothing she could do to stop them.

He lunged again. The knife was as long as her forearm, and its blade shone in the light of the naked bulb.

Suddenly there was someone beside her. A cool hand touched hers, gently taking the weapon from her fingers. She let go of it. The man was looking incredulously past Rosa.

“Alessandro?” she whispered.

But it wasn’t Alessandro. Iole stood there instead. Unruffled, she aimed the revolver at the man—and pulled the trigger.

This time the shot knocked him off his feet. When his back and head hit the floor, Rosa saw the coin-size hole in his forehead.

“There,” said Iole, pleased, as if she had finished a difficult piece of needlework.

Pantaleone’s voice was shouting in agitation from the cell phone on the floor. “What’s going on? Rosa? Are you all right?”

She ignored him. Iole, in front of her, had let the hand holding the revolver sink and was looking down at the dead man. She wore a white dress and smelled of soap and shampoo. Washed and dressed up to make a pretty quarry for the hunters to chase.

Rosa hugged her, and felt the butt of the gun behind Iole’s back as she returned the embrace. They both had tears in their eyes, but neither girl shed them.

“Have they done anything to you?” asked Rosa.

Iole shook her head.

Rosa gently took the gun from her hand. “Did your father teach you to use that?”

“My uncle,” she said. “Augusto.”

“Is Alessandro with you?”

“No.”

Rosa looked doubtfully through the open door. No trace of him. Was it the wrong room? Maybe the wrong house?

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she told Iole, although she wasn’t sure who had just saved whom. She avoided looking at the dead man. Iole, however, took two slow steps toward him, put her head to one side, and examined him.

With her left hand, Rosa picked up the cell phone again, keeping the revolver in her right. “Pantaleone?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“You lied to me.”

“Have you freed the girl?”

“Yes. But that wasn’t what you and your friend Remeo told me.” She wasn’t going to say that she had expected to find Alessandro, not here in front of Iole. But the old man knew exactly what she meant. “I’m fed up with you and your tricks.”

“The girl is free. That will have to do.”

“This is another of your tests, right? To see if I’m made of the right stuff to lead the Alcantaras.”

“You’ve just passed it.”

“You said I’d find him here.”

“Steer clear of him,” he said forcefully. “The Carnevares aren’t like you and me. He’ll bring you nothing but pain and grief.”

“You can leave that to me.” She looked at Iole, who was crouching beside the body, touching the lifeless face with her fingertip.

“You will do as I tell you now.” The old man’s voice was sharp. “I am your
capo
, and you will obey me.”

“The hell I will. Play your little games with Florinda and Zoe if they’ll go along with them.”

“Forget him, Rosa. Run to the car with the girl, get out of there, both of you. You still have a chance. But it won’t be long before someone notices that the girl’s missing.” He hesitated briefly, and then added, “Just now, when you were otherwise engaged, I was sent a message. The tribunal has made its decision.”

“So early?” There was a tinge of bluish light outside the open doors. The sun would be rising in a few minutes.

“As soon as the tribunal opened, Cesare withdrew his accusation,” Pantaleone said. “Your sister called a few minutes ago and told me. Cesare said that you were indeed to blame for his son’s death, but you didn’t pull the trigger yourself. So he got in ahead of my witnesses, avoiding a decision that would have damaged his reputation and been a bad start for a
capo
of the Carnevares. This way, however, he’s shown everyone that he submits to the laws of the dynasties and would be worthy of the title of
capo
. At this moment, the tribunal should be suggesting that the Carnevares would do well to elect him their new leader.”

“There’s another possibility,” whispered Rosa, looking at the revolver in her hand.

“Yes. There is.”

“He knew I’d try to free Iole. He knew Carnevare blood would probably flow.”

“Which it obviously just has,” commented Pantaleone.

“And this time no one will believe I
didn’t
fire the shot.” She took a deep breath and turned to the girl. “Iole, do you know who that dead man is?”

“Dario Carnevare,” said Iole. “Alessandro’s second cousin.”

Pantaleone groaned quietly. “That’s the second breach of the concordat he can throw up at you. And who knows whether it will be the last, if you don’t get out of there right away.”

“He’s been taking me for a ride.”

“Possibly.”

“And he knows I’m here. Now, at this moment.”

“Very conceivably.”

“And you knew that Cesare would lure me here.”

“I only took it into consideration. I wouldn’t have let you fall into his trap if there had been no way out of it. So if you hurry, you can do it. Cesare made a mistake, in spite of everything. He ought to have taken treason into account when he made his plans. Let that be a lesson to you, Rosa—double-dealing is your constant companion. But Cesare has no idea that two of his men in Gibellina are on your side. He feels confident, the fool!”

“Two men? Remeo, and who’s the other?”

“You may meet him if you go to your car
now, at once!
” He was obviously tired of this discussion.

So was Rosa. “I’m getting Alessandro out of here first.”

“There’s no time to—”

She hung up. After a moment’s hesitation, she switched the cell phone off and put it in her pocket.

“Rosa?” Iole had risen to her feet and was smoothing out her white dress. She looked rather dazed.

“We have to go.” Rosa took her hand and led her away from the body, over to the stairs.

“Rosa. I know where he is.” Iole smiled, but she looked strangely distracted. “I know where they took Alessandro.”

Ten minutes later, at the outer edge of the monument, Rosa was anxiously watching Iole move away, a patch of white in the dawn twilight. If she kept going in that direction, she couldn’t fail to see the Mercedes. Rosa had described the place where she had left the car and made the girl promise to hide near it and wait for her. If Rosa wasn’t back by full daylight, she said, Iole must set out on foot. Two hours’ walk down the road would take her to the nearest village.